In this interview, polio survivor Judy Hudson recounts her experience with paralytic polio that she contracted at age 19, probably during her honeymoon. Born in 1939, she came down with polio after the vaccine was available. Part of what she discusses was her choice, due to the newness of the vaccine, not to get vaccinated and how it felt later to live with that choice. Hudson [H] was interviewed by Nina Stoyan-Rosenzweig on July 23, 2013; transcript edited by Beth Grobman.
S: Can you tell us where you were born and grew up and also when?
H: I was born in Tampa on July 8, 1939. I’m seventy-four. I lived in Tampa all my life.
S: Could you tell us about meeting your husband and when you were married?
H: I met my husband in high school before I was even allowed to date. I was fifteen and he was seventeen. We dated through high school, and we were married when I was nineteen and he was twenty-one, and nineteen days following our marriage is when I contracted polio.
S: Tell me more about that …
H: I was told that probably I came into contact with it during our honeymoon. I was at work at the telephone company in Tampa, when I first got sick with fever and was admitted into Tampa General.
I worked all day the first day I had fever. Because I had just been away on vacation, honeymoon, I didn’t want to say I was sick to go home. I was working with the public, which I learned later that it was contagious. I first had a headache, a really bad headache, all day long. And the next morning I woke up, stomach upset and just flu symptoms, just aching all over. The only thing that was a bit different was that I had a stiff neck. I couldn’t bend my neck forward. This all happened on a Wednesday, and on Friday my sister-in-law took me to our doctor, our family doctor. He examined me and asked me at that time: Had I had a polio vaccination? Which I had not, nor did I really know what polio was. And so, I went back home and two days later, on Sunday, I couldn’t walk then. My legs were really weak. My husband and I, we called the doctor again. I was admitted into Tampa General, and I was in isolation seven days. The polio really raged. And by the end of that time, I was completely paralyzed from my neck down. I could hardly bat my eyes. And I stayed there as a patient for nine months. I had to lay in bed with my arms over my head and wear shoes with braces, holding my feet apart and upright.
S: And so, it sounds like your doctor may have suspected polio if he asked you about whether you’d been vaccinated. It was, what, [19]58?
H: I contracted it in [19]58, and I believe the vaccine actually came out [19]54 or [19]55. And [19]57, I was a senior in high school and the polio vaccination was offered at my high school because a young man there that was in the tenth grade contracted polio. At the time, my stepmother was concerned and was a bit afraid because the polio vaccination was so new. I was always told that it was the live virus, which it was not with the Salk. But I didn’t take it. All my friends did take it, and I remember laughing about it that I would never need that.
S: So, I guess at the time there really wasn’t like a widespread epidemic. Or was there?
H: There was, we just weren’t believing to it. Because when I was at Tampa General, there were quite a few adults [with polio]. Actually, there were children, too, but we were on the tail end of it.
S: Okay, and when you went home from the hospital after nine months, you were in a wheelchair?
H: Mmhmm … I still couldn’t feed myself. I could sit up only for a certain length of time. And we had to have someone come in three days a week. I couldn’t feed myself; I couldn’t use my hands. I couldn’t fill the coffee pot other than one cup at a time. And Dr. Passik used to tell me that in six months I would be receive back half of what I was going to receive. And within two years, I would be at my best. And I disproved his medical facts, because I wasn’t improved very much at all in six months. And yet, I did improve beyond the two years. It was just much slower. I regained the use of my hands. I am still quadriplegic, an incomplete quadriplegic, in the fact that I cannot use my shoulders. But with the polio syndrome, now, I’m losing some of the use of my hands and arms. But it’s been very limited because of not being able to use my shoulders.
S: The use of your arms, you mean?
H: Yes, I mean, just all kind of things. My children learned to flush the toilet by putting their hand under their elbow like I did. They reach and they had to learn the correct way. But so many things that I just do to — not compromise — to help in other ways that I’ve just always done. And now, so much of the weakness, the wearing out of the neurons is causing limited use.
S: You did get rehab at the hospital? Were they still using the Sister Kenny method?
H: Yes, with the hot pads. I also went into the hot tubs every day, twice a day. I did do occupational therapy. It just helped my hands a lot. I wore braces on my hands. At the time, in rehab, I walked with leg braces. But I never could stand up by myself or walk to use the walking as normal walking. It was always for therapy, rehab. I had to have help with doing it. Even someone having to pull me up to leverage. And not having the use of my shoulders, it really limited that type, too.
S: I guess you mentioned earlier you stopped working at the telephone company, and you came home. How did you feel at the time?
H: I always felt that I was going to get better. We were married six years when I had my daughter. She’s forty-nine now, and she works with disabled people. And our son is forty-five. I was busy with them. When they started to school, it was a whole new adventure. It was things that I had to face that I had not ever faced before … it was a challenge and also depressing. And I went through two years of really deep depression. I was about thirty years old and it was it the time when I realized I wasn’t going to get better physically. So, it was the psychology part. It was just sort of different, I think, with polio, because you sort of grow into your status. Where if you have a spinal cord injury, I mean, it’s there. You know the damage is there, and it’s final. Where [with polio] you have that little bit of hope … And the things that bothered me so badly that I couldn’t really talk about or kneel down were things that I couldn’t do. Things with my children, going to the mall, shopping, just little things. If I went out, I always had to have someone to be with me or to push my chair. And so that too made me feel real helpless as a disabled or challenged person.
S: I think that moment of depression is something that has certainly struck — a moment or years of depression — certainly struck other people who’ve gone through your experience. So, I would like to know if there’s more you wanted to say.
H: Just feeling very sad, feeling very sorry for myself, focusing on all the things I couldn’t do, things I wanted to do. Beginning to feel resentful to the people that could do those things and didn’t appreciate doing them. [Laughter] I don’t have battles of depression [now] at all, but I like to be an advocate for disabled people. Not just for me, but for other people, because I feel like I know what they feel. And so many of my friends, I mean, all my friends are so wonderful, because being around me, they know the battles. They are more outgoing toward other people. But there’s so many people that are still so — They don’t have the thoughts of what challenges are in life for other people and really don’t care. And so, that bothers me.
For so long, I was really focused on the things I couldn’t do, the negative things in life. And my children were a lot of joy. And Ervin [my husband] has never treated me that I was less of a person. And that has just been so important. We did have so many battles financially, and the physical things, you know, to adjust.
I did [finally] go to a power wheelchair, and it had more pluses than minuses for me in my life. Physically, it was a minus, the fact that just even a little bit of movement was good for me. And yet, when I was in the power chair, I needed it because I was losing the use of my arms, even pushing the chair at home.
S: Could we go back and talk about children and having children and whether that was a challenge and how you kind of negotiated that?
H: It was a challenge, but it was wonderful challenge. I wish I could redo it. They tried me a lot. [Laughter] My daughter climbed on top of our house when she was two, when I was home alone, and fell off. My husband was out of town and my stepdad had left the ladder up beside the house. He had fixed a TV antenna back in those days, and Holly had just taken off to climb up on the roof. That was one of the most trying and testing cons of being a disabled person not being able to help your child when you think they’re gonna die. But we got through that. We laugh about a lot of things that they did, knowing I was disabled.
S: Like what? Can you give me—
H: Running from me. My son ran away one time knowing that I couldn’t get him. We were in the grocery store together, just what kids would do knowing that mom can’t give ‘em a little whack on their rear. I mean, there was times when I would go into the kitchen and my daughter would be in the flour and have white flour all over her. And to clean that up in a wheelchair, you get one spot on a wheel and it’s all over the house and things like that were challenging.
S: So if you are faced with someone who doesn’t understand, or you feel is not treating you appropriately, what do you do? How do you call them on it?
H: There’s just some battles still that people don’t care about the disabled, and it bothers me. It doesn’t matter what the disability is, they want to be treated just like anyone else is treated. The civil rights laws that came into effect in [19]64 entitled disabled people — it wasn’t just racial. And I lived before that as a disabled person, and after that, and during that. So, I can sympathize with the racial feelings of being put down and having to go through a back door to a restaurant, and being called, “you people.” Even today, I’m still faced with some of those challenges. And I’m a fighter. [Laughter] I don’t mind now being faced with those things.
With an individual person, I’ve talked to them. And I’ve had to learn, because I have come at it in not a good way. Because people can read me wrong, that I’m not appreciative, that I’m demanding on something that I’m not entitled to. But I still keep in mind, I’m not feeling like I am for me only. There’s some things that are legal that I can write the Department of Justice, and they can do something about it, and have in the past.
S: So, would that be facilities that aren’t ADA compliant, and that kind of thing?
H: Exactly. And we had a bout in South Carolina some years ago with a restaurant. To me, it doesn’t matter if someone is trying and they are financially not able to and understand the problem, it’s tolerant. But in this situation, they were not. And they informed us that the city council owned the building, and they didn’t have to. And so, I wrote the proper people and didn’t get a response. So, I did write the Department of Justice, and they referred me to the state in South Carolina. I had wonderful advocates there. It took some time, but they did have a ramp put it in. [Laughter] And I went back and took pictures. But the people there on the state level really did what—Just legally visiting and sending out letters and telling them what was required and by what time. And even though they bought it, they had to—
S: To comply.
H: Mmhmm. The attitude was just terrible that they had the idea that because they were government officials that they didn’t have to abide. I mean, most people have gone overboard to do the right thing. And even in cases when they’re faith-based and are not under the auspices of the ADA and don’t have to do it, they do it, because it’s the right thing to do.
There are some steps to take that fifty years ago, there was nothing you could do about it. There was no restrooms. I knew what it was to go all day and not be able to go to a restroom. And speak to managers at the mall and they would pat me on the head, and you know, “You people,” this and that and do nothing. And then I saw when the laws were implemented. People always told me, “Don’t go to Washington because there are steps everywhere.” But they were the first one to implement the laws, and that meant so much to me to go to the Lincoln Memorial. It was the first place I had ever gone with an elevator to a bathroom. And so, they were the forerunners of implementing the ADA laws. It takes using the law, because I feel strongly that if we have laws and they’re not implemented, we don’t have laws. And so, it’s sad to think they’re forced to do it.
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